1. It is not a sense of obligation
to labor for the salvation of souls.

2. It is not a yielding to this
conviction of duty.

II. What it is.

1. It is true sympathy with the
Spirit of Christ.

2. It is the love of and concern for
perishing souls.

3. It is a jealousy for the honor of
God.

4. It is more than a state or states of
the sensibility. It is true benevolence aflame for the
conversion and salvation of the world of sinners for whom
Christ died.

III. How to excite and secure this state of
mind.

1. Not by urging labor for the
salvation of souls as a duty.

2. Not by insisting that every church
should support a missionary.

3. Not by insisting that every family
should be represented in the missionary field.

4. Not by denouncing the supineness of
the church in relation to these matters.

5. Not by exhortations to deny self and
devote our means to the support of missionary
societies.

All these may be important considerations
to urge in their proper place; but they are in place only when the
true missionary spirit is already excited. If the true missionary
spirit is not already awakened, the urging of such considerations
can have but a legal and not a gospel influence. We cannot secure
the love of souls by pressing the duty of loving and caring for
them. we cannot secure benevolence by pressing the obligation to
benevolence. The attempt this is to overlook the laws of mind.

Positively, the true missionary spirit must
be excited, if at all, by presenting and pressing the true
character, condition, and prospects of sinners; their moral and
spiritual state; their ill-desert; the certainty of their
damnation unless they are made holy; their total moral depravity,
illustrated in the fact of heathenism, their profound ignorance of
the true God; their astonishing and disgusting depravity and
superstition; their cruelty to each other; their debasing of
themselves; their ignorance of and contempt for the true God; the
compassion, self-sacrifice, and efforts of God to save them; in
short, the presentation and pressure of all those considerations
that truly represent the lostness of sinners, with the compassion
and dying love of Christ for them.

These considerations, when truly and aptly
set before the human mind, tend directly and strongly to awaken
and sustain a true missionary spirit. When we wish to awaken a
spirit of charity to the unfortunate or suffering, in cases of
famine, or pestilence, or war, or great national or local
calamities, do we expect to open the hearts and purses of the
people by simply urging the duty of charity or almsgiving? Do we
not, rather, gather facts and statistics and show the people the
real state of the case? Do we not gather facts and incidents and
spread them before the public, and thus find access to their
hearts and purses? If we want nurses for army hospitals, if we
want colporteurs or Bible-readers or any efforts of benevolence,
do we not spread out before the people the necessities of the case
as much as possible? Do we not paint the ignorance, the suffering,
the degradation, the ruin so widespread and unspeakable, and thus
endeavor to awaken and actually secure the standing up of
multitudes of helpers? This is common sense. It is scriptural. It
is philosophical. When the people are made to understand, somewhat
in detail, the facts of the case, they hardly need be told that it
is their duty to do something. They are intensely disposed to do
something. Narrate the facts, spread out the truth, let us look at
the field, let us see what is there as far as possible, let us
know the particulars, lead us through it, or give us a panoramic
view of its desolations, its horrors, of its ruin, of its
perishing necessities, and if these things do not stir in us the
missionary spirit exhortations are but in vain. But real
Christians must be and will be excited to action by the true
representation of the facts in the case.

True benevolence is secured only by a
knowledge of the facts demanding benevolence. Disinterested love
cannot be secured by command, by convictions of duty, or by fear
of punishment. It must be secured, if at all, by presenting the
guilt, the ill-desert, the ignorance, the ruin, and unspeakable
value of the human soul, or the wants, the suffering, the
ignorance and degradation and desolation of a race in ruins. And,
as we are constituted, it is necessary to descend as much as
possible to particulars, facts, cases, individuals. We do not
comprehend generalizations, general statements, and statements on
a vast and infinite scale. We need to have presented and to ponder
an interior view of particular localities, families, and
individuals, and to be carried forward from a particular locality
and cases to a more general and widespread view of the
desolations, in order to be moved to the foundation of our being.
First give us the individual cases, customs, localities, abuses,
and desolations, then lead us to a consideration of an
indefinitely extended number of like cases. When we are impressed
by an interior view of touching individual cases and
circumstances,, according to the laws of our mind, we can then be
carried forward to the indefinite multiplication and consideration
of cases of a similar kind and import. In this way alone are we
capable of being moved to a true sympathy with Christ and to the
exercise of a true missionary spirit.

This leads me to remark, as kindly as
possible:

1. The mistake of some of our returned
missionaries, and of agents that go about to collect funds for
missionary purposes. They often prepare what they call missionary
sermons and go around and preach upon the duty of supporting the
missionary cause. The duty is admitted. They complain of the
supineness of the churches. The justice of the complaint is
admitted. They urge that the number of missionaries should be
indefinitely increased. This also is admitted. They urge
self-denial and self-sacrifice for the cause of missions. This
also is admitted. They urge that every church possessing the
pecuniary ability should have a missionary in the field. The truth
of this is not questioned. They urge parents to train up their
children as missionaries. This question is not contested. All
these are admitted. But all this is practically of little or no
avail. Individuals and churches are moved to but a very limited
extent to act in this matter under such presentations. All this we
have known, all this we have admitted; but we need facts more than
we do principles in this case. We need to have an interior view of
the missionary fields, of the facts, degradations, and desolations
of the missionary fields, either home or foreign. Because of this
mistake, the Church has come to feel that if a missionary agent is
going to preach they care but little to hear him. A missionary
truly said in my hearing, not long since, that in many places a
missionary meeting was regarded as dry and uninteresting. This is
often so with missionary sermons. But why is it so? The why is
obvious. There is a mistake in the preacher. Instead of moving us
to the exercise of a missionary spirit by giving us a view of his
field of labor and opening up to us the real facts in the case, he
exhorts us to a duty which we admit, but utterly fails to move us
to the performance of it by exciting our benevolence. I have often
sat with pain to hear what is called a missionary sermon,
witnessing the astonishing mistake that missionaries and
missionary agents make in their appeals to the people. When agents
or missionaries have come to preach to my people I have often
begged them not to give us a sermon, but to give us facts.
Sometimes they could and sometimes they could not throw aside
their manuscripts and talk to us of the real state of things in
their missionary field. Whenever they have given us the facts our
people have been stirred to action. I never saw our people fail to
be deeply moved under the representation of the facts and
desolations of the missionary field represented, whether home or
foreign. More has been done to excite a missionary spirit by one
such representation of facts than by all the missionary sermons
they ever heard.

2. I notice the mistake that is made in
urging young men and women to become missionaries. An appeal is
often made to young men to become ministers and to both sexes to
become missionaries because it is their duty. It may be their
duty, but it is their duty first to have a missionary spirit. It
is their duty to care supremely for the honor of God and the
salvation of souls. But if they have not this love and concern for
souls and a supreme jealousy for the honor of God it is not their
duty to undertake the work while their heart is not in it. To urge
them to do so is only to press them to go forward in a legal
spirit, when, it will be found they will do but little good. Set
them to work for God and souls without the love of God and souls
and they will dishonor God and stumble the souls with whom they
labor. They cannot truly represent God without God's love of souls
in their hearts. They cannot win souls without an unfeigned love
and deep concern for them in their hearts. I fear there are
already too many laborers in the field, both at home and abroad,
who are moved rather by a sense of duty than by the love which
constitutes the religion of Jesus.

3. We can see from this the only true way
to secure efficient laborers for God, both at home and abroad.
Excite their love, their compassion, their zeal by presenting the
real facts of the case. If all the missionary boards in
Christendom will call home their missionaries, male and female,
for one year and enjoin it upon them to go to every church in
Christendom and spread out before them as fully and as much in
detail as possible the real state of the unconverted world, I
believe they will secure more missionaries and more money than
have been secured in all the time since missionary operations were
first undertaken. I believe they might return to their missionary
fields after a year of such labor with more men and more money
than they would otherwise obtain in fifty years.

4. I would humbly remark that it appears to
me to be an error in the reports of missionary boards, and in the
correspondence of missionaries themselves with their boards, that
there is not enough of detail in regard to the state of the
unconverted in their respective fields to stir the hearts of the
people. Is there not something lacking here? To save time and
expense, their correspondence and publications appear to me to be
too dry. To save time and expense, they seem to withhold from the
people the food which is necessary to stimulate and render
permanent their missionary zeal. Their reports are interesting as
far as they go; but do not the churches need much more than the
statistics regarding the number of churches, the number of
missionaries, the number of converts, and such business details as
are generally spread before the public? We need more facts, more
of that which the missionary sees and hears and feels in his
everyday labors. These things become so familiar to missionaries
that I fear they forget the importance of communicating the
details to the churches at home. I have found that in conversing
with a foreign missionary, either male or female, for half an hour
about the details of their work and their field I will be excited
to more zeal, more love for the souls of the heathen, and more
effort to save their souls than by any number of missionary
sermons or other public communications from missionaries. I know
the missionaries complain that they have not time to write these
details; but how can they be better employed? Would it not more
effectually promote the missionary interest to take time, at any
rate, and keep the people at home fully apprized of the facts so
essential to the permanency of missionary zeal in the churches? I
desire to say much more, but this article is already, perhaps, too
long. God bless the missionaries!

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